"There's a certain level of affluence and awareness in places like California. So we're making a concerted effort -- businesses, on a government level and certainly on an environmental level -- to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and lead the rest of the world, set an example for the rest of the world, for what can be done."

GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN RECENTLY PLEDGED TO REDUCE CLIMATE EMISSIONS TO 40 PERCENT BELOW 1990 LEVELS WITHIN THE NEXT 15 YEARS.

SOUNDBITE (English), Governor Jerry Brown

"The trouble with climate change is it's a 'bad' happening very slowly. And if we don't get it in time, it'll be too late."

THAT'S HALFWAY TO THE GOAL SET BY FORMER REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER FOR THE YEAR 2050.

GREEN TECHNOLOGY START-UPS FLOURISH IN CALIFORNIA …

… AND WHEN LEADERS WANT TO TALK CLIMATE CHANGE, THEY LOOK TO CALIFORNIA.

"There's a certain level of affluence and awareness in places like California. So we're making a concerted effort -- businesses, on a government level and certainly on an environmental level -- to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and lead the rest of the world, set an example for the rest of the world, for what can be done."

GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN RECENTLY PLEDGED TO REDUCE CLIMATE EMISSIONS TO 40 PERCENT BELOW 1990 LEVELS WITHIN THE NEXT 15 YEARS.

SOUNDBITE (English), Governor Jerry Brown

"The trouble with climate change is it's a 'bad' happening very slowly. And if we don't get it in time, it'll be too late."

THAT'S HALFWAY TO THE GOAL SET BY FORMER REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER FOR THE YEAR 2050.

GREEN TECHNOLOGY START-UPS FLOURISH IN CALIFORNIA …

… AND WHEN LEADERS WANT TO TALK CLIMATE CHANGE, THEY LOOK TO CALIFORNIA.

28. SOUNDBITE (English), Cara Horowitz, executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, University of California, Los Angeles School of Law (transcript below) ++sot partially covered++

"There's a certain level of affluence and awareness in places like California. So we're making a concerted effort -- businesses, on a government level and certainly on an environmental level -- to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and lead the rest of the world, set an example for the rest of the world, for what can be done."

GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN RECENTLY PLEDGED TO REDUCE CLIMATE EMISSIONS TO 40 PERCENT BELOW 1990 LEVELS WITHIN THE NEXT 15 YEARS.

SOUNDBITE (English), Governor Jerry Brown

"The trouble with climate change is it's a 'bad' happening very slowly. And if we don't get it in time, it'll be too late."

THAT'S HALFWAY TO THE GOAL SET BY FORMER REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER FOR THE YEAR 2050.

GREEN TECHNOLOGY START-UPS FLOURISH IN CALIFORNIA …

… AND WHEN LEADERS WANT TO TALK CLIMATE CHANGE, THEY LOOK TO CALIFORNIA.

"There's a certain level of affluence and awareness in places like California. So we're making a concerted effort -- businesses, on a government level and certainly on an environmental level -- to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and lead the rest of the world, set an example for the rest of the world, for what can be done."

GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN RECENTLY PLEDGED TO REDUCE CLIMATE EMISSIONS TO 40 PERCENT BELOW 1990 LEVELS WITHIN THE NEXT 15 YEARS.

SOUNDBITE (English), Governor Jerry Brown

"The trouble with climate change is it's a 'bad' happening very slowly. And if we don't get it in time, it'll be too late."

THAT'S HALFWAY TO THE GOAL SET BY FORMER REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER FOR THE YEAR 2050.

GREEN TECHNOLOGY START-UPS FLOURISH IN CALIFORNIA …

… AND WHEN LEADERS WANT TO TALK CLIMATE CHANGE, THEY LOOK TO CALIFORNIA.

28. SOUNDBITE (English), Cara Horowitz, executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, University of California, Los Angeles School of Law (transcript below) ++sot partially covered++

As world leaders converge on Paris for the 2015 United Nations Summit on Climate Change, many will be looking to California for answers on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively while maintaining a healthy economy.

California cut its teeth nearly 70 years ago on pollution control when it was forced to confront a mysterious haze - later dubbed “smog” - that was choking residents and curtailing business and tourism in the city.

The state was among the first internationally to crack down on polluters and demand emissions control standards in vehicles.

Until now California has made impressive strides on legislating the fight on global warming under Democratic and Republican governors alike.

The state has an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, a deadline Democratic Governor Jerry Brown underscored earlier this year when he pledged to get California halfway to that goal within 15 years.

California has sent a delegation to the Paris climate talks with the goal of recruiting more municipal and provincial governments in countries around the world to mirror the international climate reduction goals at the local level.

As world leaders converge on Paris for the 2015 United Nations Summit on Climate Change, many will be looking to California for answers on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively while maintaining a healthy economy.

California cut its teeth nearly 70 years ago on pollution control when it was forced to confront a mysterious haze - later dubbed “smog” - that was choking residents and curtailing business and tourism in the city.

The state was among the first internationally to crack down on polluters and demand emissions control standards in vehicles.

Until now California has made impressive strides on legislating the fight on global warming under Democratic and Republican governors alike.

The state has an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, a deadline Democratic Governor Jerry Brown underscored earlier this year when he pledged to get California halfway to that goal within 15 years.

California has sent a delegation to the Paris climate talks with the goal of recruiting more municipal and provincial governments in countries around the world to mirror the international climate reduction goals at the local level.

"There's a certain level of affluence and awareness in places like California. So we're making a concerted effort to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and lead the rest of the world, or set an example for the rest of the world, (in) what can be done."

It's been 30 years since a NASA scientist said global warming was here, and since then, the world's temperature has been rising.

On June 23, 1988, James Hansen told Congress and the world that global warming had already arrived.

Over the past 30 years, the world's annual temperature has warmed nearly 1 degree (0.54 degrees Celsius), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the effects are being seen across the globe.

STORY-LINE

Salida, Colorado, is a picturesque town in the heart of the Rocky Mountains that's seen above average temperature rises in the past 30 years.

South central Colorado, the climate division just outside Salida, has warmed 2.3 degrees on average since 1988, among the warmest divisions in the contiguous United States.

"When I was a kid we really had nice weather here. Really nice," he says as he waters his lawn.

But the winters have become drier and he has to water his lawn more often.

"It changed quite a bit because we didn't go no moisture and everything, it just changed all of a sudden,'' he says.

Across town, Buel Mattix, owner of Mountain Air HVAC helps his workers bend sheet metal to make vents for the cooling and heating systems he installs.

Years ago when he started, he installed only a few air conditioners a year. Now, he can't keep up with the requests.

"I probably won't get to all the air conditioning jobs. I mean we typically do have a list I mean it's probably already at 10 or 15 people this year."

According to an Associated Press statistical analysis of 30 years of weather, ice, fire, ocean, biological and other data, every single one of the 344 climate divisions in the Lower 48 states - NOAA groupings of counties with similar weather - has warmed significantly, as has each of 188 cities examined.

The effects have been felt in cities from Atlantic City, New Jersey, where the yearly average temperature rose 2.9 degrees in the past 30 years, to Yakima, Washington, where the thermometer jumped a tad more. In the middle, Des Moines, Iowa, warmed by 3.3 degrees since 1988.

Since 1988, daily heat records have been broken more than 2.3 million times at weather stations across the US, half a million times more than cold records were broken.

On June 23, 1988, a sultry day in Washington, NASA's top climate scientist James Hansen told Congress and the world that global warming wasn't approaching - it had already arrived.

In a scientific study he even forecast how warm it would get, depending on emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Hansen projected that by 2017, the globe's five-year average temperature would be about 1.85 degrees (1.03 degrees Celsius) higher than the 1950 to 1980 NASA-calculated average.

Hansen did not take into account that the sun would be cooling a little, which would reduce warming nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit, said the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Jeff Severinghaus.

Climate scientists point to the Arctic as the place where climate change is most noticeable, with dramatic sea ice loss, a melting Greenland ice sheet, receding glaciers and thawing permafrost.

The Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the world.

"The science was right and yet we haven't taken advantage of our scientific understanding to make policies that are effective,'' Hansen says.

He also warned about the possibilities of extreme global weather events occurring because of climate change.

Hansen left NASA in 2013 and is now an advocate for policies to control fossil fuel emissions.

"We can't afford to go through another cycle like that where they assume, where young people assume that the political leaders are going to address the problem,'' Hansen says.

Mike Sugaski also lives in Salida, Colorado. When he started firefighting more than three decades ago, a 10 thousand-acre wildfire (15.62 square miles) was considered huge.

"Boom all of a sudden we're starting to get larger fires and now we're up over 100-thousand (acres), easy,'' Sugaski says. "You kinda keep saying, 'How can they get much worse?' But they do."

Wildfires in the United States now consume more than twice the average they did 30 years ago.

The statistics tracking climate change since 1988 are almost numbing.

North America and Europe have warmed 1.89 degrees - more than any other continent.

The Northern Hemisphere has warmed more than the Southern, the land faster than the ocean.

The hotter world that Hansen envisioned in 1988 has pretty much come true so far, more or less.

Earth is noticeably hotter, the weather stormier and more extreme. Polar regions have lost billions of tons of ice; sea levels have been raised by trillions of gallons of water. Far more wildfires rage.

Three decades later, most climate scientists interviewed rave about the accuracy of Hansen's predictions given the technology of the time.

Since the 1800s scientists have demonstrated that certain gases trap heat from the sun on Earth, like a blanket.

Carbon dioxide is the major human-caused greenhouse gas doing this and it comes from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Federal and international science reports say that more than 90 percent of the warming that's happened since 1950 is man-made.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Salida, Colorado, US - 30 April 2018

1. Wide shot of Salida, Colorado

2. Medium shot of downtown Salida with people walking on a trail

3. Medium shot of people on trail with their dog

4. Deer in a neighbourhood

5. Local winery

6. Pal Linza standing behind a sprinkler

7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Pal Linza, Salida resident:

"Well I, when I was a kid it was really nice weather here. Really nice."

8. Tight shot of water landing on grass

9. SOUNDBITE: (English) Pal Linza, Salida resident:

"It changed quite a bit because we didn't get no moisture and everything, it just changed all of a sudden."

10. Pal Linza standing behind string of sprinklers

11. Medium of house with an air conditioning unit

12. Medium of air conditioning unit

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Salida, Colorado, US - 2 May 2018

13. Buel Mattix working on an air movement sheet metal piece

14, SOUNDBITE: (English) Buell Mattix, owner, Mountain Air HVAC:

"I probably won't get to all the air conditioning jobs. I mean we typically do have a list, I mean it's probably already at 10 or 15 people this year."

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Washington, US - 9 May 1989

15. STILL Image of Jim Hansen, former director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testifying before a Senate Transportation subcommittee (ID No 890509046)

UNKNOWN

Denver - 8 June 2018

16. STILL image of excerpt of Hansen's testimony from June 23, 1988 testimony before Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee:

"Altogether the evidence that the earth is warming by an amount which is too large to be a chance fluctuation and the similarity of the warming to that expected from the greenhouse effect represents a very strong case. In my opinion, that the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now."

"The science was right and yet we haven't taken advantage of our scientific understanding to make policies that are effective."

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Beaufort sea, international waters - 16 July 2017

18. Wide of vessel MSV Nordica on the water. In 2017 the Finnish icebreaker set a new record for the earliest transit of the fabled Northwest Passage, which has been opening up sooner and for a longer period each summer due to climate change.

19. Various broken sea ice

20. Various drone shots of ice

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Kutubdia Island, Cox's Bazar district, Bangladesh - 13 October 2015

21. Various of Kutubdia island embankment which has been breached at different places by sea water advancing towards the village

22. Various of coconut trees affected by saline water, tilting and uprooted

23. Various of salinity-affected land at Kutubdia Island, where sea water is already breaking down the mud dykes and pouring into villages

It's been 30 years since a NASA scientist said global warming was here, and since then, the world's temperature has been rising.

On June 23, 1988, James Hansen told Congress and the world that global warming had already arrived.

Over the past 30 years, the world's annual temperature has warmed nearly 1 degree (0.54 degrees Celsius), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the effects are being seen across the globe.

STORY-LINE

Salida, Colorado, is a picturesque town in the heart of the Rocky Mountains that's seen above average temperature rises in the past 30 years.

South central Colorado, the climate division just outside Salida, has warmed 2.3 degrees on average since 1988, among the warmest divisions in the contiguous United States.

"When I was a kid we really had nice weather here. Really nice," he says as he waters his lawn.

But the winters have become drier and he has to water his lawn more often.

"It changed quite a bit because we didn't go no moisture and everything, it just changed all of a sudden,'' he says.

Across town, Buel Mattix, owner of Mountain Air HVAC helps his workers bend sheet metal to make vents for the cooling and heating systems he installs.

Years ago when he started, he installed only a few air conditioners a year. Now, he can't keep up with the requests.

"I probably won't get to all the air conditioning jobs. I mean we typically do have a list I mean it's probably already at 10 or 15 people this year."

According to an Associated Press statistical analysis of 30 years of weather, ice, fire, ocean, biological and other data, every single one of the 344 climate divisions in the Lower 48 states - NOAA groupings of counties with similar weather - has warmed significantly, as has each of 188 cities examined.

The effects have been felt in cities from Atlantic City, New Jersey, where the yearly average temperature rose 2.9 degrees in the past 30 years, to Yakima, Washington, where the thermometer jumped a tad more. In the middle, Des Moines, Iowa, warmed by 3.3 degrees since 1988.

Since 1988, daily heat records have been broken more than 2.3 million times at weather stations across the US, half a million times more than cold records were broken.

On June 23, 1988, a sultry day in Washington, NASA's top climate scientist James Hansen told Congress and the world that global warming wasn't approaching - it had already arrived.

In a scientific study he even forecast how warm it would get, depending on emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Hansen projected that by 2017, the globe's five-year average temperature would be about 1.85 degrees (1.03 degrees Celsius) higher than the 1950 to 1980 NASA-calculated average.

Hansen did not take into account that the sun would be cooling a little, which would reduce warming nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit, said the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Jeff Severinghaus.

Climate scientists point to the Arctic as the place where climate change is most noticeable, with dramatic sea ice loss, a melting Greenland ice sheet, receding glaciers and thawing permafrost.

The Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the world.

"The science was right and yet we haven't taken advantage of our scientific understanding to make policies that are effective,'' Hansen says.

He also warned about the possibilities of extreme global weather events occurring because of climate change.

Hansen left NASA in 2013 and is now an advocate for policies to control fossil fuel emissions.

"We can't afford to go through another cycle like that where they assume, where young people assume that the political leaders are going to address the problem,'' Hansen says.

Mike Sugaski also lives in Salida, Colorado. When he started firefighting more than three decades ago, a 10 thousand-acre wildfire (15.62 square miles) was considered huge.

"Boom all of a sudden we're starting to get larger fires and now we're up over 100-thousand (acres), easy,'' Sugaski says. "You kinda keep saying, 'How can they get much worse?' But they do."

Wildfires in the United States now consume more than twice the average they did 30 years ago.

The statistics tracking climate change since 1988 are almost numbing.

North America and Europe have warmed 1.89 degrees - more than any other continent.

The Northern Hemisphere has warmed more than the Southern, the land faster than the ocean.

The hotter world that Hansen envisioned in 1988 has pretty much come true so far, more or less.

Earth is noticeably hotter, the weather stormier and more extreme. Polar regions have lost billions of tons of ice; sea levels have been raised by trillions of gallons of water. Far more wildfires rage.

Three decades later, most climate scientists interviewed rave about the accuracy of Hansen's predictions given the technology of the time.

Since the 1800s scientists have demonstrated that certain gases trap heat from the sun on Earth, like a blanket.

Carbon dioxide is the major human-caused greenhouse gas doing this and it comes from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Federal and international science reports say that more than 90 percent of the warming that's happened since 1950 is man-made.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Salida, Colorado, US - 30 April 2018

1. Wide shot of Salida, Colorado

2. Medium shot of downtown Salida with people walking on a trail

3. Medium shot of people on trail with their dog

4. Deer in a neighbourhood

5. Local winery

6. Pal Linza standing behind a sprinkler

7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Pal Linza, Salida resident:

"Well I, when I was a kid it was really nice weather here. Really nice."

8. Tight shot of water landing on grass

9. SOUNDBITE: (English) Pal Linza, Salida resident:

"It changed quite a bit because we didn't get no moisture and everything, it just changed all of a sudden."

10. Pal Linza standing behind string of sprinklers

11. Medium of house with an air conditioning unit

12. Medium of air conditioning unit

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Salida, Colorado, US - 2 May 2018

13. Buel Mattix working on an air movement sheet metal piece

14, SOUNDBITE: (English) Buell Mattix, owner, Mountain Air HVAC:

"I probably won't get to all the air conditioning jobs. I mean we typically do have a list, I mean it's probably already at 10 or 15 people this year."

"The science was right and yet we haven't taken advantage of our scientific understanding to make policies that are effective."

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Beaufort sea, international waters - 16 July 2017

18. Wide of vessel MSV Nordica on the water. In 2017 the Finnish icebreaker set a new record for the earliest transit of the fabled Northwest Passage, which has been opening up sooner and for a longer period each summer due to climate change.

19. Various broken sea ice

20. Various drone shots of ice

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Kutubdia Island, Cox's Bazar district, Bangladesh - 13 October 2015

21. Various of Kutubdia island embankment which has been breached at different places by sea water advancing towards the village

22. Various of coconut trees affected by saline water, tilting and uprooted

23. Various of salinity-affected land at Kutubdia Island, where sea water is already breaking down the mud dykes and pouring into villages

SALIDA, COLORADO_ A PICTURESQUE TOWN IN THE HEART OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

SOUNDBITE: (English) Pal Linza, Salida resident:

"When I was a kid we really had nice weather here. Really nice.:"

PAL LINZA HAS LIVED IN SALIDA ALL HIS LIFE.

BUT THE 86 YEAR OLD HAS SEEN HIS HOME TOWN CHANGE.

THE WINTERS HAVE BECOME DRIER AND HE HAS TO WATER HIS LAWN MORE OFTEN.

SOUNDBITE: (English) Paul Linza, Salida resident:

"It changed quite a bit because we didn't get no moisture and everything, and everything you know just changed all of a sudden."

BUEL MATTIX USED TO INSTALL ONLY A FEW AIR CONDITIONERS A YEAR WHEN HE STARTED OUT SEVERAL YEARS AGO.

NOW...

SOUNDBITE: (English) Buel Mattix, owner, Mountain Air HVAC:

"I probably won't get to all the air conditioning jobs. I mean we typically do have a list I mean it's probably already at 10 or 15 people this year."

THEY MAY NOT SEEM LIKE BIG CHANGES.. BUT THEY HAVE WIDESPREAD IMPLICATIONS

ACCORDING TO NOAA, THE TEMPERATURE IN THE US HAS GONE UP NEARLY 1.6 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT IN THE LAST 30 YEARS.

THE WARMING PLANET IS JUST PART OF THE DIRE PREDICTIONS MADE BY A NASA SCIENTIST IN 1988.

THAT'S WHEN JAMES HANSEN TESTIFIED BEFORE CONGRESS THAT GLOBAL WARMING WAS ALREADY HERE AND WORSENING. HE WARNED THAT THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT HAD BEEN DETECTED AND WAS AFFECTING THE CLIMATE.

++AP GRAPHIC++

AN AP ANALYSIS SHOWS SOME CITIES HAVE SEEN AN EVEN GREATER INCREASE THAN THE SALIDA AREA'S 1.9 DEGREES WARMING SINCE 1988 - THE YEARLY AVERAGE TEMPERATURE IN ATLANTIC CITY ROSE 2.9 DEGREES AND DES MOINES, IOWA WARMED BY 3.3 DEGREES.

SOUNDBITE: (English) James Hansen,

"The science was right and yet we haven't taken advantage of our scientific understanding to make policies that are effective."

THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE HAS BEEN SWEEPING... FROM MELTING ARCTIC ICE TO RISING SEA LEVEL.

SALIDA, COLORADO_ A PICTURESQUE TOWN IN THE HEART OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

SOUNDBITE: (English) Pal Linza, Salida resident:

"When I was a kid we really had nice weather here. Really nice.:"

PAL LINZA HAS LIVED IN SALIDA ALL HIS LIFE.

BUT THE 86 YEAR OLD HAS SEEN HIS HOME TOWN CHANGE.

THE WINTERS HAVE BECOME DRIER AND HE HAS TO WATER HIS LAWN MORE OFTEN.

SOUNDBITE: (English) Paul Linza, Salida resident:

"It changed quite a bit because we didn't get no moisture and everything, and everything you know just changed all of a sudden."

BUEL MATTIX USED TO INSTALL ONLY A FEW AIR CONDITIONERS A YEAR WHEN HE STARTED OUT SEVERAL YEARS AGO.

NOW...

SOUNDBITE: (English) Buel Mattix, owner, Mountain Air HVAC:

"I probably won't get to all the air conditioning jobs. I mean we typically do have a list I mean it's probably already at 10 or 15 people this year."

THEY MAY NOT SEEM LIKE BIG CHANGES.. BUT THEY HAVE WIDESPREAD IMPLICATIONS

ACCORDING TO NOAA, THE TEMPERATURE IN THE US HAS GONE UP NEARLY 1.6 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT IN THE LAST 30 YEARS.

THE WARMING PLANET IS JUST PART OF THE DIRE PREDICTIONS MADE BY A NASA SCIENTIST IN 1988.

THAT'S WHEN JAMES HANSEN TESTIFIED BEFORE CONGRESS THAT GLOBAL WARMING WAS ALREADY HERE AND WORSENING. HE WARNED THAT THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT HAD BEEN DETECTED AND WAS AFFECTING THE CLIMATE.

++AP GRAPHIC++

AN AP ANALYSIS SHOWS SOME CITIES HAVE SEEN AN EVEN GREATER INCREASE THAN THE SALIDA AREA'S 1.9 DEGREES WARMING SINCE 1988 - THE YEARLY AVERAGE TEMPERATURE IN ATLANTIC CITY ROSE 2.9 DEGREES AND DES MOINES, IOWA WARMED BY 3.3 DEGREES.

SOUNDBITE: (English) James Hansen,

"The science was right and yet we haven't taken advantage of our scientific understanding to make policies that are effective."

THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE HAS BEEN SWEEPING... FROM MELTING ARCTIC ICE TO RISING SEA LEVEL.